Natural Shapeshifter: Wendy is a natural and talented shapeshifter when
using Life magic. She is never in danger of losing herself to the
identity of her beast-forms, and the shapes she assumes are as natural
to her as the one she was born in. Moreover, the difficulty of Arete
rolls to change her own shape is two less than normal.

Limited Forms: All Druids have a limited set of animals
they can turn into: A hoofed animal for speed, a clawed predator for
fighting, a bird to fly around as and an aquatic animal for swimming.
These are represented by the zoomorphic bands circling the right bicep.
The human form is the topmost of these zoomorphic bands.The forms Wendy can assume are:
Hart, black bear, goshawk, and otter.

Honored Lineage: Descended from the Mac Tighearnán line of druids that
goes back to the Tuatha Dé Danann/Wyck

Geas: Druid magic cannot be used to kill or cause lethal harm
directly, or the druid's own magic will kill her on the spot. Imposed
by the Earth. (Linked to Avatar BG)

Wonder

Scáthmhaide (SKAH-wa-jeh) or Shadow Staff
Beautifully carved oak staff with Celtic bindings for strength and
speed on both ends, inlaid with cold iron on one end and silver on the
other, flush to the wood. When activated, will produce a similar effect
to Strength of Earth.

Equipment

Necklace made of strung-together 1" square iron charms, stamped with
various sigils and symbols, around a 2" round center pendant with
Celtic knotwork pattern. Frequently used to store Tass.

Enemy

(not taken as a flaw, but plot hook) A MacTiernan family legend that is nearly never spoken of

In the long ago and far away, Eochaidh Ó Caoimháin, as he
was known, loved well. He loved the Earth, She who made him and
sustained him and called him to Her service. He loved a young woman,
gentle and fair of face. He was loved in return, for as Airmid held his
heart, so he held hers.

But it came to pass that Airmid fell ill, and despite the powers at
Eochaidh’s command, he could not heal her. In desperation, he took her
to one of those who walked the land only by night and subsisted on
blood. The neamh-mairbh took both of the lovers and drained them, then
fed them so they could rise as he had risen. Airmid was drained too
far, for the neamh-mairbh had not the experience he boasted. Eochaidh
rose broken in heart, soul… and most importantly, mind. The
neamh-mairbh was of the Childer of Malkav, whose blood held the curse
of insanity. Eochaidh knew himself to be Cernunnos, the Horned God.

Rejected by his family, and teachers, he gathered some few of his
students and the beginnings of a cult were formed, eventually
designating themselves the Dheisceabail an Cernunnos. Through the ages,
he tended and nurtured a hatred for both his own family and that of his
beloved, including the order they formed in the ensuing years.

From time to time, a young woman of the MacTiernan clan looks alike to
Airmid to be near to her own beloved self, and in rare moments of lucid
memory, Oscar Kavanaugh (as he is now known) looks upon her and hates
her for not being the one whose semblance she bears.

It has come to pass that one such has partnered with a Hale, a
descendant of those who most strongly urged his own family to shun him.
Worse yet, the two have moved to near his own demesne! Now, among the
lowest of those who gather about the edges of his cult have started to
move against the pair, declaring them anathema to their god, and marked
for destruction.

Paradigm

Avatar

Flidais (Celtic Huntress Goddess)

Essence

Primordial

Depth

Strong

Style

Closed

Spheres

Life & Spirit

Hooks

As taught to Wendy:

All
life, all of everything, is bindings. From the binding of
atoms
together to the bindings of the stars to the very fabric of the
universe, everything is part of a greater weave. What is bound can be
unbound, what is unbound can be bound.

Druids
are those the Earth Herself called to be Her particular
champions. The ancient Celtic Gods, aka the Tuatha Dé
Danann, were
actually merely the first and most powerful of these. Druids are bound
to the earth after an apprenticeship of 12 years, through a series of
rituals including the application of tattoos made from natural inks
with a thorn.

Once bound to the earth, the druid can draw through her tattoos the
strength for many things, from the ability to contact the various
elementals of the earth to sustaining her own stamina for far longer
than normal to shifting to the varied Umbral planes. She can also heal
even near-mortal wounds, but must be in contact with the earth through
her tattoos to do so.

Accordingly,
the druid has the responsibility to guard and preserve the
earth's magic
through whatever means practical and necessary; with
the
understanding that sentient beings, including spirits, can be affected
if necessary, but there’s a price to pay for the violation of free
will. This doesn't mean that it's the druid's responsibility to go
around preventing all ecological disasters (though heading off the more
dangerous ones is just practical), it means that

Everything will eventually fall apart.
Bonds will come undone, life will cease. It is not the
druid's place to prevent this, only to make certain it happens in its
own time.

A
druid is forbidden to directly harm any living thing with her magic.
If she does, her own magic will kill her on the spot. This doesn't mean
that it can't be used indirectly, by doing something like catching them
in a trap (vine wrapped around ankle, rift in ground opened then closed
around them) then knocking them out or lopping off their head with a
sword.

Foci

General
Foci: Tattoos running from a triskele on
the bottom of her
right foot, up her right side, circling around her bicep four times,
then down to another triskele on the back of her right hand. Made from
natural inks and applied with a special thorn over the course of
several days.

To cast different types of magic, the different frames of mind
(headspaces) are
achieved by thinking in different languages, so as Wendy learns new
spheres, she also must learn new languages. These are used as
mental commands to activate specific portions of the tattoos.

Prime ●
The druid sacrifices pain to fuel her magic. The most obvious example
of this is in the tattoos applied during the ritual bonding her to the
Earth. Other sacrifices can include anything from a pinch hard enough
to raise a bruise clear up to hanging in imitation of Odin's sacrifice.
• System: For each level of bashing damagethat she suffers, the druid
gains a point of Quintessence she can use for a particular spell. For
each level of lethal damage, the druid gains an additional point of
Quintessence. This damage is done directly to the druid's Pattern, so
it cannot be healed using magic, only time and rest. In essence, the
druid is drawing upon her own life force, breaking down the Quntessence
of her own being to fuel her magic.

Sacred
Circle
TB:V 67 (modified)

Prime ●● Spirit ●
Druids, like many other Verbena, often perform their rites within the
bounds of a circle that it warded to protect them against unwanted
influences and spirits. Traditionally, the circle is created by walking
the bounds thrice with a wand, staff, or blade. The spirits of the four
elements are then called upon to consecrate and enforce the circle's
boundaries until the druid releases them.
• System: A Sacred Circle can have a radius up to the caster's Arete in
yards; each success allocated to the radius increases it by a yard. A
circle cast for general purposes must have successes allocated to its
duration. The remaining successes from the casting provide dice for
countermagic. These dice are rolled automatically against any spell
cast on a subject within the bounds of the circle. Any spirits entering
the circle or attempting to affect those inside the boundary trip an
alarm.

Strength
of Earth
TB:V 68

Life ●●●
For the druid, the living Earth is the source of
strength, spiritually and magically. Using this spell, it's also a
great source of physical strength or stamina. To cast the spell, the
druid must have her tattoos in contact with bare rock, sand, soil, or
dirt. Pavement, worked stone, or wooden floors won't do. The spell ends
if the caster's tattoo loses touch with the earth for any reason.
• System: Each success on the spells casting adds a dot to the mage's
Strength or Stamina (though not both unless a higher level of Life is
used). The caster must also assign successes to duration for the spell
to last more than a moment. The spell is coincidental as long as the
druid's Strength or Stamina remains within human bounds (five or fewer
dots). Greater levels of strength or stamina require vulgar magic to
achieve.

Life
Scan
MR 170

Life ●
By binding her sight to the correct spectrum, the druid can find the
bio-magnetic bonds of nearby living creatures. This can be helpful in
targeting friends or enemies, since a druid easily remembers individual
patterns that she's seen before. Most druids set their sight to filter
out undesired life forms like microscopic organisms or simple vermin.
She can also, with a Perception roll, see flaws that indicate various
diseases, injuries, toxins, and parasitic infestations in a life form's
Pattern. The more successes scored, the better the information. If
enough successes are scored, the druid can even map and analyze the DNA
of the life form.

Better
Body
MR 171

Life ●●●
Druids use this one more for alterations like gills, tougher skin,
better appearance, etc. Successes determine extent of changes and
duration.

Atomic
Sight
Kes
Basically Analyze Substance MR 173

Matter ●
By binding her sight to the correct spectrum, the mage can see the
molecular bonds of matter and use them to tell gold from pyrite or
exactly what a chair is made of and how much weight it can hold.

Detect
Lycanthrope
RDO

Life ●● Spirit ●
This rote allows a mage to tell if there are any were-creatures in the
area.
This rote does not specify which type of were-creature.

Longevi-Tea
Kes
Elixir of Longevity from RDO

Life ●●●
The druid distils some of her blood, adds it to a specialized tea
blend, and drinks the final product. This elixir will halt the ageing
of the mage for a time, but not rejuvenate her.

Body of Light
MR 183

Prime ●●
Creates an etheric construct

Enchant Weapon
MR 183

Prime ●●
The druid can bind Quintessence into a weapon to make it cause
aggravated damage.

Spirit Sight
MR 187

Spirit ●
By binding her sight to the correct spectrum, the druid can see into
the spirit world/across the Gauntlet. With additional successes, she
can bind other senses.

The Mac Tighearnán line is a widely varied one with
several
branches, but that at least claims to trace back to the Tuatha Dé
Danann. This particular outlying branch of that line is often thought
of as one of the nut-bearing ones by the closer-lying branches in the
Gardeners of the Tree. Hippy-dippy neo-druids long before there even
was such a thing, this particular slender line is one of those rather
grudgingly acknowledged, even though they’ve produced some fairly
powerful practitioners.

The
most recent of which is the daughter
of Grania MacTiernan and Pat Samuels. Neither had chosen to be mages,
but the potential was especially strong in Wendy, so she was
apprenticed to a cousin of her mother's at age 10 and awakened by
introduction to the mountain elemental Santa Ana. Sithneach
Mac Tighearnán was not only a mentor in magics, he was a
teacher
in all things. Wendy was homeschooled in all the usual subjects as well
as her magical studies, and got a high-school diploma. Most of her
apprenticeship, however, was memorizing theory. Learning the knotwork
and the meanings behind it that would go into her tattoos, learning the
bindings of everything from the atomic bonds of matter to the complex
bonds between people to the bonds of the planets with the fabric of
space.

Wendy passed most of her tests with relative ease, academic, physical,
and magical. One major test turned out to be crucial: the Baolach
Cruatan or Dangerous Trial. Wendy found herself in a glade
with three exits guarded by wild pigs (peccaries), a bobcat, and a
bear. After finally reluctantly killing one of the pigs with a stout
branch to make the rest scatter, she stepped through that exit to be
confronted by two of the Tuatha Dé Danann – Brighid and Flidais.
Brighid seemed to be there mainly to bear witness, but both goddesses
questioned her understanding of the test and her actions. A test of
courage and resourcefulness in a situation where magic and weapons are
unavailable, the test is that of character in a crisis. Neither the
cowardly nor the bloodthirsty are wanted to bond with the earth. After
Wendy answered the questions, she awoke with a plain staff and added
training in fighting with it to her studies.

Eventually, Sithneach took Wendy to a small cave, cast a sacred circle,
took out specially made inks and a hardened sharpened thorn that was
still attached to a living thornbush, and stabbed her foot with it.
Wendy passed out, flooded with the presence of the Earth. For the time
it took her mentor to finish the first loop of her tattoos, an
inhibitor loop that would allow Wendy to feel Gaia's presence without
being overwhelmed, she slept. When her still raw and bloody
foot was pressed to the floor of the cave, Wendy woke and was told that
was her last get-out-of-pain-free card for the duration. The
process took from the Vernal Equinox to Beltane. Once finished, Wendy
had a line of knotwork from the loop on the bottom of her right foot up
her right side past the curve of her breast, over her right shoulder,
and down her right arm. Four loops circled her bicep, each holding a
representation of one of the forms she could assume once she reached
sufficient skill with Life magic to achieve shapeshifting. The process
and the intense communion with the Earth forged her soul further.

After the tattoos healed, Sithneach took her to meet the elders of the
family. They gifted her and feasted, reminiscing about their own
experiences. One gift was a special staff, introduced to her as
Scáthmhaide, or Shadow Staff. A beautiful staff of oak, carved with
knotwork similar to, but miles beyond, that in her tattoos. At the end
of the party, Sithneach told her that she needed to expand her
horizons, to learn how others did things and to integrate her magic
with theirs. He gave her a name and a location. Shalae Silvanus
and New Orleans.